Criminal Women

Books change your view of the world, but they don't do it that often. This one is going to do it oftener than most, I'd reckon:

"Once again, the point here is not to suggest that women never act in self-defense -- of course they do. The point is that criminologists contemplate no other factors. Whereas they once described violent women as lesbian man-eaters and perverts, we have simply sailed to the other extreme, from wh*re to madonna. The old fabric of misogyny blends seamlessly with new threads of feminist essentialism to preserve the myth that women are more susceptible than men to being helpless, crazy, and biddable." (ch. 2, "Maybe You Mistook Me for an Angel")

There have been a number of books arguing that female criminality goes largely unrecognized and unreported, and is misinterpreted when it does make the headlines, but this looks to be one of the best. Readable despite lapses in terms of sociological discourse and gender theory, it argues that the late-twentieth-century battles against the old form of sexism must now be re-fought against the new form of the sexism they replaced it with. Although Pearson wouldn't put it this way herself, I will: feminism is mostly rubbish, and this book offers lots of good examples of how. I disagree with a lot of it, and you probably will too, but it's still likely to change the way you look at the world and the men and women who inhabit it.